Terminology

[kognise]

I think to better communicate and more easily build an API and UI, we need to come up with a uniform set of terminology. Below is my (very much changable) suggestion based on what I've heard the community say the most:

• A "chapter" "collective" is one singular instance/deployment of Chapter For example, Women who Code at the domain chapter.womenwhocode.com
• A "user" is a person who authed to the chapter For example, Kognise
• A "group" "chapter" is a container for events, with a description and subscribers, and one or more "admins" who can manage it For example, Women who Code NYC
• A "event" is a single meetup that users can RSVP to, has a specific location and time, and has "organizers" For example, Women who Code NYC April Meetup

(All the examples here are fictional and meaningless and probably super inaccurate)

What do you guys think of these - could they made more clear? Am I missing anything?

[cameronsr]

As someone who fits the admin/organizer description - I currently run a group of ~1200 - accurate enough for me.

Recommend we may want a term for several affiliated Chapter instances in different geographic locations.

Maybe Chapter Organization or Group?

Example - Operation Code (group I volunteer for) has ~18 separate chapters in different cities. Each effectively would run a separate instance of Chapter, but would all be affiliated under the same Chapter Org or Group.

[allella]

Maybe "organization" instead of group, but I'm saying that with little context to the schema. Group is used a lot for permissions and people, so my mind immediately went to a group of users.

[SumanHansada]

Hi @kognise . So are groups like the part of chapter or like chapters can have same groups ??

[allella]

Also, it seems likely that on one instance you'd have multiple different organizations and possibly only 1 chapter per organization. Or, you might have an instance that hosts multiple orgs and multiple chapters, or 1 org and 1 chapter, or just 1 chapter.

Given the self-hosted direction of the project I'm imagining things like a "HackGreenville" instance for the Greenville, SC or surrounding area. We might host 30 or some different chapters, some with affiliation to a national or regional organization (Code for America, Women Who Code) and in other instances they are home grown, 1-off local chapters.

[kognise]

@cameronsr the idea is that your organization would have a chapter (Operation Code), and within the chapter would be groups for different locations (for example, Operation Code NYC) - maybe I made that too confusing 😛

[lkreimann]

@kognise I found that pretty clear. There are probably more possible organizational structures though :thinking: would guess the MVP would be good with the terminology on top.

I've used Meetup etc. very rarely though, might not be the best reference.

[cameronsr]

Nope, makes sense now. I just haven't had my coffee yet. shrug

[allella]

Actually, I see that "chapter" is one deployed instance. That wasn't my initial feeling of it.

May be better to call it an deployment or some such and use "chapter" to represent the hosting/organizer of meetup events.

[allella]

I say that because my feeling is that one deployed instance could host numerous local meetup chapters. We have 30+ in Greenville, SC and I don't see every group organizer hosting their own deployed instance.

[kognise]

@allella hmmm, that's one of my concerns - but I think some deployments won't be focused on certain organizations and might be more general purpose, and "chapter" is super generic.

[allella]

Yeah, but "chapter" has context in things like Women Who Code would have multiple chapters around the country/world. So, using a physical world concept that's pretty well used in organized, chapter-based groups and mixing it with a technical usage already managed to confuse me.

[allella]

I'm wondering if reserving "chapter" for it's more typically used context is a better idea and then use a more technical word, like deployment, or instance, or container, or host system, to describe a single running server.

[kognise]

Yeah, but "chapter" has context in things like Women Who Code would have multiple chapters around the country/world. So, using a physical world concept that's pretty well used in organized, chapter-based groups and mixing it with a technical usage already managed to confuse me.

Okay. So then could something like this be better?

• A _____ is one singular instance/deployment of Chapter
• A "user" is a person who authed to the chapter
• A "chapter" is a container for events, with a description and subscribers, and one or more "admins" who can manage it
• A "event" is a single meetup that users can RSVP to, has a specific location and time, and has "organizers"

[allella]

I like using "chapter" there instead of group, so that looks better to me.

For __ maybe server, deployment, container, instance, host (don't really like using host though since is has a human use in the same context)

[kognise]

I feel like server, deployment, container, and even instance are all too technical for the average user. Instance is the best-sounding to me - this is gonna be tricky.

Maybe something like collection or site?

[allella]

Funny enough, there is a lot of overlap between the event context and the technical context here, so that's why we should probably use real-world words for real-word things and technical words for technical things. Plus, avoid words that mean two different things in those two context, like "host" or "site"

[allella]

Collection, or something like it, might work. I think "site" has both technical and real-world context and probably should be avoided.

[kognise]

Collection, or something like it, might work. I think "site" has both technical and real-world context and probably should be avoided.

Agreed. Maybe "collection" or "community?"

[allella]

Collective is used a lot these days, maybe over-used.

[allella]

Community might do it for me.

[kognise]

Honestly, Collective seems pretty good, as overused as it may be... :thinking:

[allella]

I'd be good with either, at least as a starting point. I think that revised list has good context to the thing they are trying to describe, and avoids words that are vague or overlap between real-world and technical meanings.

[cameronsr]

Was in transit. Current context works as stated. 👍

[Dusch4593]

Why not go with "Camp" since this is gonna be from freeCodeCamp?

[Dusch4593]

And instead of "user", we have "campers"?

[allella]

@Dusch4593 my understanding is this will be used by any free organization. Plus, I haven't run into a lot of FCC devs here, so not sure camp is practical. Though, it's a fun idea.

[Dusch4593]

@allella yeah I was shooting for memorability and recognition.

[allella]

@Dusch4593 the "Chapter" is the core object in the schema and we got that to match, so at least we have that going for us.

[trosel]

Hey, can someone clarify the usage of the term "chapter" for me?

Women Who Code is an organization that has an NYC chapter. The NYC chapter has events.

So why does this product make it sound like Women Who Code is a chapter?

[allella]

@trosel

Women Who Code is an organization. It would have its own "Women Who Code" instance of the "Chapter" application. Chapter is the name of the application.

There are many Women Who Code groups around the country. These are often called "local chapters".

Inside of the database schema we have a table / entity that holds each chapter.

New York City Chapter Los Angeles Chapter Greenville, SC Chapter

Each of these chapters would host their own local events and the users would RSVP to the events.

There has been confusion about the application we're building being called "Chapter" and one of the tables inside of the database schema also being called "chapter". However, we previously called that table "groups", which seemed vague.

If we need to go back to "group" and/or change the name of something in the terminology to make it less confusing then please feel free to make suggestions.

[trosel]

@allella Thanks! That helps. I think the only confusion was with the name of the app being called Chapter.

So in terms of the app (and possible federation), "Women Who Code" is still called an organization, right?